


A Great Man's Shadow

by terminaltongues



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Emotions, Falling In Love, Human Katsuki Yuuri, I guess this classifies as supernatural? Fantasy?, M/M, Shadow Realm, Shadows - Freeform, Victor is from the shadow realm, Yuuri is still a competitive skater, a little angst but not really, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2018-10-13 19:52:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terminaltongues/pseuds/terminaltongues
Summary: Victor Nikiforov, the Shadow Lord's best warrior, is cast out of his realm for committing a petty crime against another shadow warrior. Unwilling to accept his deed as wrong, Victor is stripped of his shadow and dropped into the human realm without any means of defending himself. When Yuuri Katsuki finds him, it's the middle of the night in a vacant mall and the great Nikiforov of the Shadows is crawling on the asphalt, bleeding out from his legs.





	1. The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to finish POT this past week, but that fic looks like it just keeps stretching out to be longer and longer, so I wanted to take a break to actually finish something before Camp Nanowrimo. Initially, this was supposed to be no more than 10k words, but again, the fic only seems to be expanding. Regardless, I wanted to post something before April. I'm too late, so April Fools to myself I guess.  
> Anyways, if you were expecting an update on my other fic, I apologize, but I hope you can get some enjoyment out of this. 
> 
> Have fun.

Victor tried to appreciate the irony of his situation as he dragged himself through the small outdoor mall of shops, his legs hanging useless behind him. His vantage point from the asphalt offered little detail to the retail stores beyond the large Japanese characters. Yakov had tossed him out before his absorption of the language was complete, so the letters still appeared blurry and unfocused to his unsettled eyes.

It didn’t matter. Victor didn’t expect anyone to be visiting the mall in the middle of the night. As it was, shadows hung on everything, displayed like products of their own. The moon cast a milky glow across the different shop signs making the shadows appear seductive and haunting in their long, stretched form. They seemed to be calling to Victor, mocking his weakness. His own shadow was notably missing, leaving him feeling naked and uncomfortably human.

Victor huffed. This was a humiliating punishment as any. He was only glad that there was no one else here to see it. The great Victor Nikiforov, Yakov’s strongest warrior, stripped of his shadow, and broken from the waist down. The last part, Victor thought, was an accident. Yakov had made his point by stripping him of his shadow, taking his legs was just a misfortune in landing. Victor had grown reliant on his shadow to catch him, and it had resulted in possibly irreparable damage to this mundane form. Perhaps Yakov had anticipated that too.

Victor dragged his body forward and debated his next move. He understood that Yakov was trying to prove a point, but Victor would not let him succumb so easily. He was known as the best for a reason, he would not let this human skin, no matter how fragile, convince him otherwise. He may be stripped of his shadow, but it didn’t mean he was completely powerless. The bottle that hung heavy against his chest, connected by a thin chain made of steel reminded him of that.

Victor just needed a good vantage point of the sun. All it would take was a view of the horizon as the orb began its ascent to the sky. The thought of the wide shadows it would cast, contrasted against the fiery orange of its hearth made Victor’s heart yearn. The pale light of the moon only served to intensify his irritation, making him to crawl faster.

Victor realized that crawling faster had actually made it easier because of the momentum and pants smugly as he made steady progress across the harsh asphalt. He failed to notice the long trail of blood he was leaving in his wake.

“Oh my god!”

Victor froze. There couldn’t be anyone there, it was the middle of the night.

“Are you okay?” The voice called out. It came from behind Victor and for a second, Victor swore he saw bright red flash across his vision. His fists clenched and he twitched, trying to reign in his annoyance at being found, and by a human no less. If he had his shadow, he would have been able to disappear into the darkness and not bother with such a tedious interaction. If he had had his shadow, he wouldn’t have been caught off guard by a mortal in the first place.

Victor debated whether screaming or staying silent would be more likely to scare the human off. He didn’t have time to decide, because all of a sudden the sound of rubber soles hitting the pavement grew louder and before Victor could even think about playing dead, there were fingers digging into his shoulder, gentle, but demanding, urging Victor to turn and face him. With a pained sigh, he did.

The sight he was met with did not impress him. It was a human boy, or man based on his stature and the sharpness of his features. Not much was discernible by moonlight, but from what Victor could tell, he was of average build and had creamy white skin that seemed to glow in the moonlight. The only feature that stood out to Victor were his eyes, bright and expressive, they seemed to bore into the very meat of Victor, curious and accusing as if they knew the petty crime he had committed. Above all, they expressed a sheen panic.

“Are you okay?” The man repeated.

Victor tilted his head to the side, considering. He had been cast out of his realm by his master without any power or way of getting back, and his mortal legs lay broken and bleeding before him. He wasn’t having the best night.

“I think my legs are broken,” Victor settled on saying. His voice came out gruff and accented, but the language flowed smooth off of his tongue. It took him a moment to realize that it was English. The man had spoken in English. Victor had stuck out so clearly, that even from the distance, he had recognized Victor as a foreigner. Victor was built from shadows, meant to blend in. The fact that he stuck out so sorely left a bitter taste in his mouth.

The man’s eyes widened further if possible and glanced frantically between Victor’s legs and his calm, albeit slightly annoyed face.

“Uh, do they hurt?” He asked, voice hesitant.

Of all the things he could have asked him, and the man wanted to know if Victor’s shattered bones hurt? Victor couldn’t decide whether to scream or laugh. Instead, he settled on telling the truth.

“I don’t feel pain in the same way mortals do. If I did, it would be the utmost of inconveniences,” he said deadpan.

The man blinked.

He looked suddenly uncertain, and pulled his hand back away from Victor’s shoulder. A certain warmth leaves with his body and Victor reminded himself that it was just the blood beneath his fingertips that had been supplying the heat. He could puncture his flesh and the red substance would leak out like helium from a balloon and the man would deflate into the flesh shell he was. He looked up at the man’s face that was glowing in the moonlight, eyes riddled with concern and heaved a pained sigh.

“But are you okay?” The man turned and stared grimly at the long trail of dark blood Victor made. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Victor scoffed, only to realize that the man’s face, much like the shop signs, was beginning to blur around the edges and bleed into two separate images entirely. Victor blinked and his whole frame of references seemed to shiver.

“Hey, look at me, hey no don’t do that. Look at me,” the man snapped, waving his hands wildly in front of Victor, trying to keep his attention, startled by the glassiness that began to take over Victor’s face. Victor thought the man bore a strong resemblance to a chicken when he squawked and moved around like that.

It’s his last thought before his vision was swallowed up by darkness.

 

* * *

 

 

When Victor woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he wasn’t wearing the same clothing as before. A fluffy dark green robe had been tied loosely to his waist beneath a large comforter. The second thing Victor noticed was that Victor was in a bed. It’s only when Victor moved to get out of the bed did he notice that both of his legs had been bandaged in thick white gauze all the way up to his knees. The bandages were loose enough that Victor could wiggle his toes, but tight enough that he couldn’t do much else.

Victor groaned. He had forgotten his predicament. He his eyes and brings an arm over his eyes in despair. Yakov could certainly be cruel.

“Oh, are you awake?” A voice asked from the doorway, hesitant.

Victor turned his head and peeked through heavy lids at the human in the doorway. His head is barely peeking in from behind the door frame.

“Yes,” Victor responded, tone clipped. The man took his response as permission to enter the room.

He hadn’t noticed it before, but much of the man’s form had been swallowed up in a large tan coat. Now, dressed in only black athletic pants and a long sleeve blue shirt, Victor could see that the man had a youthful, athletic build. Victor pondered him. He was clearly responsible for the bandages on his feet. Maybe he was a warrior? Many warriors were trained in first aid. Warrior or not, it was degrading to think that this human lugged his body home and dressed him like a doll.

“How are you?” the man asked.

Victor closed his eyes again. Was that all humans knew how to ask? Of course Victor wasn’t okay. The bandages on his legs should have been answer enough. Victor didn’t deign his question with a response.

Fingers pried at his arm, pulling it back so Victor was made to look at the human’s large eyes boring into him, concern playing at their surface and just as intense as before. Victor met his gaze but said nothing.

“Your legs were pretty mangled when I found you,” the man said, once he realized that Victor wasn’t going to respond to him. “We have an old family friend that’s a doctor, so she came over and bandaged your legs. She said both of your shinbones were fractured very badly,” the man looked down and his voice quieted, “Like someone had smashed them with a hammer.” Victor didn’t deny or confirm the man’s diagnosis and refused to look back into his ominously large eyes, but could feel his curiosity coming off of him in waves. “I thought about taking you to a hospital, but she’s dealt with open fractures before and I didn’t know if that would be a good idea...” the man trailed off.

Victor wasn’t surprised. The human had found him crumpled and bleeding without any wallet or form of identification on his person. If his rough accent didn’t give him away as a foreigner to the sleepy coastal town, then his shock of grey hair certainly did. The human probably thought he was mixed up in bad company. Human affairs could be so bloody.

Yet, when Victor took in his expression again, he found no trace of fear in the planes of his face, only curiosity and an awkward concern. How novelty.

“I’m Yuuri by the way,” the human, Yuuri, said. Victor stared. He forgot how frivolous humans could be with their names. They always seemed to place value in the wrong things. They filled negative space with material things and promises with paper currency.

Yuuri looked at him expectantly and Victor sighed. It seemed as if he had already lost everything else at this point, what was one more thing?

“Victor. My name is Victor,” Victor said, resigned to his fate.

Yuuri’s eyes lit up at his response, relieved that Victor was engaging in conversation.

“It’s nice to meet you, Victor,” Yuuri said trying the name out on his tongue. Victor twitched at the sound of it. It has been a long time since anyone had referred to him as anything other than Nikiforov. He pronounced it like _Veektor,_ the word coming out soft and rich. It felt strangely intimate. For a moment they just stared at each other, both overwhelmed in their own respects.

“Yuuri!” a muffled voice called from the distance, splintering the moment. Yuuri physically startled and backed up, a light flush dusting his cheeks. Victor remained still.

“I have to go,” Yuuri said, eyes wide and apologetic. “You should rest.” Yuuri got up and left, turning his body quickly as if to hide the blossoming blush of pink across his delicate features from Victor’s sharp eyes.

I’m not tired, Victor thought. His body disagreed and his eyelids began to droop against his will, his body following suit and sinking back into the warmth of the bed. His eyes drifted shut once more.

  


* * *

 

 

After that, Victor was only awake sporadically, usually for no more than a couple minutes at a time. Sometimes when he opened his eyes, the room was pitch black save for a sliver of moon light peeking in through the gap in the blinds on the window. It highlighted a section of the wall covered in many neatly pinned up photos. Victor couldn’t make out the small human faces in the dim lighting. He drifted back to sleep, a fuzzy image of a dark-haired boy dancing across the backs of his eyelids.

Other times, Victor woke up to find Yuuri sitting beside him, glasses perched on the the bridge of his nose and chin propped up on his knee as he read a book. Most of the books were in  Japanese, but occasionally he caught the English alphabet arranged to form long strings of sentences. Sometimes Victor was conscious enough to watch through heavy lids as Yuuri's lips moved in small movements, working to make the words out. Other times, all he saw was a flash of those bright eyes of his like a lighthouse in the horizon before a wave of sleep overtook him again.

While Victor was asleep, he dreamt. He never used to dream, not in his world, but he also never needed to sleep for such strong stretches of time in order to heal from an injury. In his world, it was unlikely that Victor would have acquire such an injury in the first place. He was envied across the Shadow Realm. Victor was an impeccably neat warrior under his master, known for his grace and his precision.

If they were to see him now, floating in and out of the consciousness, the darkness swallowing him and toying him like a cat and a mouse, they would surely mock him. Victor was known for abundant talent, but he was also known for his equally large ego. Now, both were useless as long as his spirit was attached to this fragile bag of skin.

In his moments of clarity, right before the darkness took him away again, Victor wondered if Yuuri felt similarly inhibited. Immediately afterwards, he felt annoyed for even thinking of it in the first place. The following sleep was often fitful, as if he could feel his pupils twitching beneath his eyelids, trying to command consciousness back to his body.

After an undeterminable amount of time, Victor awoke again and found himself strangely refreshed, as if he were a snake that had just finished molting. His eyelids felt their normal weight as they shifted up and down, blinking to adjust against the bright light of the morning. The weakness that had plagued his body and soul seemed lighter and he felt almost as weightless as he did in his own realm.

Experimentally, Victor wiggled his toes. His muscles twitched as if startled at being awoken after remaining unused for so long, but obliged his command easily, wiggling joyously before him, despite the bandages on his legs. Even in this mortal form, Victor's healing process was much faster than any human's. Of course, he never felt the full extent of the break in the first place, so while his legs could still be damaged, they were healed enough to respond to Victor's impulses.

He swung his legs over the side of his bed to get up and immediately fell to the floor as his useless legs trembled beneath him and then gave away completely. Victor groaned in annoyance and defeat as he hit the ground hard. He debated just lying there until Yuuri returned, but then found that he didn't have to wait long as the door slid open and Victor was met with the sight of a pair of fully functioning legs, clothed in plain black slacks. His eyes traveled up to find a woman staring down at him. She had dyed blonde hair, her dark roots peeking beneath a thick black headband. Her ears were decorated with various piercings, and she had a decidedly unforgiving expression on her face. There was something about her, though, that seemed uncharacteristically soft. Victor realized a moment later that it was her eyes. Despite their cold surface, they held a warmth just beneath that echoed Yuuri's softness. His sister.

During his flashes of consciousness Yuuri had mentioned his family and their names, but Victor could recall no more than that.

"Get up," she said. She had a cigarette between her fingers and she put it to her lips, taking a long drag before blowing the smoke down watching disinterested as it rained down on Victor's head.

Victor huffed, but forced himself into a sitting position, dragging his useless bandaged legs in front of him. Humans were already so breakable, it seemed particularly stupid to quicken the decaying process. Victor withheld his judgement in this instance.

"These things don't work," Victor snipped, gesturing at the large white lumps in front of them.

Yuuri's sister gave him an unimpressed look.

"That's what happens when you smash them to pieces," she said, deadpan.

"I didn't smash them myself," Victor grumbled. He still wasn't sure how his legs had ended up in such poor shape. When Yakov had opened the portal between the two worlds, his body was still intact. It was only in those final moments when Yakov reached through him, his hand flickering like a light, to strip him of his power did he feel his insides crumple and spasm as if his very breath were being stolen. Right after, his usually translucent form had tightened up and seized like wearing a too-tight jacket. When Yakov tossed him through the portal, his whole body had convulsed and when it hit the earth, it had landed on a curved bike rack, his legs smashing into the hard metal bar before landing on the asphalt. Perhaps he had landed on smashed glass bottles as well.

"Clearly not. I don't know what you did to get beaten like that, but whatever it was, I don't want it affecting Yuuri. He's got enough on his plate, he doesn't need to be taking up charity cases right now," she said in that same detached voice of hers, but Victor could see the threat in her words as clear as day.

"I haven't done anything," Victor growled. It was true enough. Victor hadn't been conscious enough to do anything. Besides, he wasn't a brute. As soon as these stupid legs started working again, Victor would be out of this room and back to where he belonged. It was too presumptuous to call his realm home, especially considering how quickly he had been tossed out, but he certainly wasn't planning on staying on this rotting planet.

"I don't care," she sighed, "about what you haven't done. I'm concerned about what you will do." She stepped forward and placed a sandaled foot against his left foot. "If I find out that there's anything for me to be concerned about, I want hesitate to make sure you never walk again." She pressed down her foot to punctuate her point.

Victor wasn't impressed. He had faced small animals more intimidating than this spiky female human. Even as she applied a rough pressure to his fragile leg, he couldn't feel the real consequence of the movement. Shadows didn't translate to the real world which meant that all the feelings felt in this world were only wisps and shadows of real feelings on this ungodly stinking human planet. Victor was about to express as much, but then he saw another pair of legs enter the room. It was Yuuri, and he look vaguely horrified by the scene he had walked into.

"Mari!" His face was pale and stricken.

Mari lifted her foot and retreated to the doorway, her movements snakelike and predatory. She turned and gave Yuuri a contemplative look before slithering out of the room. Yuuri’s gaze followed her for a moment, before he turned to face Victor.

He immediately sprang into action, rushing forward, the color returning to his face all at once as he helped prop Victor back on the bed, flustering about and apologizing as he did so.

“I’m so sorry. I’d say she’s not usually like that, but she really just doesn’t like strangers. Are you hurt?” Victor’s breath was momentarily stolen by the incredible earnestness of Yuuri’s voice.

“Uhm,” Victor declared eloquently. The human’s proximity was making his mind go blank and he was suddenly so _close_ to him, practically in his lap, with both of Victor’s legs caging him in and Yuuri’s hands gripping gently at Victor’s bicep and the other near the base of his neck. He cleared away the uncertainty in his throat, annoyed that a human should extract such a reaction.

“I’m not hurt,” Victor snapped, unable to hold in his irritation. Yuuri visibly cowered, his hands pulling away leaving the spots tingly in their wake. With a larger distance between them, Victor could think clearly. “I already told you, I don’t experience mortal pain,” Victor said.

Yuuri stared.

“You’re not, are you? Human, I mean. You’re not human.”

Victor barely withheld his snort of disgust.

“Thank the gods, no,” Victor laughs. Victor may have been momentarily trapped in their skin, but he was no way near the same as a human creature.

“Oh,” Yuuri responded, voice mystified. He cocked his head to the side and gave Victor a contemplative look, similar to the one Mari had given him not even minutes ago. “What are you then?”

Victor puffed up his chest.

“I am Victor Nikiforov of the Shadows, the top warrior of the Shadow Realm and second in command to the Shadow Lord of our great realm.”

Yuuri was staring again. The contemplative look hadn’t left his face, but it had warped into something more intense.

“Okay,” he settled on, “If you are from the Shadow Realm, then what are you doing in Hasetsu?”

Victor considered this. Victor doubted that Yakov had intentionally dropped him here.

“The Shadow Realm has no real location,” he started slowly. “It revolves around the different worlds like your Earth revolves around the sun, but at a different speed. Time is different in the Shadow Realm,” Victor explained. Even if it took him years to get back to there, it was hard to predict how much time it would equate to in his realm.

“So, you’re saying that you landing here was completely random?”

Victor nodded. “Right.” He seemed to mull over this. “Why did you get, uhm, exiled?” Yuuri asked, his voice softening sensitively on the last word. Victor narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t exiled. He said as much.

“I wasn’t exiled. I’m just being punished,” He huffed.

Yuuri’s eyebrows rose. Victor hadn’t noticed them as much before. He contemplated that they probably attributed a lot to the general expressiveness of Yuuri’s facial features. Right now they were displaying intense curiosity and a sliver of uncertainty.

“What are you being punished for?” The question was simple enough, but Victor feels shame burn his face and he has to break eye contact.

“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, “I’ll just take my bottle and be out of your way.” Victor reached for his neck to grab at the thick chain, only to find it bare. He looked up sharply at Yuuri.

“Where is it?” He demanded.

Yuuri stared at him, eyes a mixture of helplessness and and confusion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. His voice was so genuine that it grated against Victor’s skin.

“I had a chain around my neck with a glass bottle at the end of it. Where is it?” Victor grabbed Yuuri by the wrist, his hand snapping out quicker than humanly possible. Despite his legs, he managed to yank Yuuri forward and maneuver him on to the bed. He used his upper body strength to drag his legs on either side of Yuuri’s torso and trap him beneath him. He had both wrists between one hand, the other applying pressure to his chest, letting his fingers dig into the soft material of Yuuri’s shirt.

Yuuri’s eyes grew impossibly wide, and for the first time since Victor met him, his worried gaze bled into something more akin to genuine fear. Good, Victor thought vindictively. Victor was one of the most feared warriors of the shadow realm, he deserved to be feared. It satiated something rabid inside of Victor, a animalistic desire to display his prowess, his dominance over this fragile human.

“Where is it?” Victor demanded, letting his voice morph into the threatening, deep tone it should be.

Yuuri was huffing little breaths, face turning red.

“Don’t- don’t-” he was trying to say, his voice broken up by short intakes of breath. Victor eased the pressure against his chest but tightened his grip on his wrists.

“What?” He spit.

Yuuri sucked in a large breath of air.

“Don’t move like that, your bandages will fall off.”

Victor could only stare down at him for a second before he physically deflated, letting his limbs go soft and heavy as he slumped forward onto Yuuri’s chest.

What a useless human. Even in the face of immediate threat, all he did was comment on Victor’s bandages? Victor sighed.

Hands patted at his shoulders and he realized Yuuri was trying to say something, but Victor wasn’t listening, too caught up in his own self pity. Of course, he fell into the human realm only to get stuck with the frailest kind, too dumb to even consider self preservation. Yuuri wouldn’t last a second in the Shadow Realm.

“Victor, would you please get off? I need to change your bandages,” Yuuri was saying, his words floating into his ear and landing like a butterfly lands on a twig or the nose of a laughing child. Victor went limp and allowed Yuuri to slide out from beneath him and adjust Victor’s body so he was lying back with the pillow propped underneath his head and his legs propped up in Yuuri’s lap.

He gave Victor an encouraging smile as he moved and offered little pleased pats to his thigh as he went about undoing the gauze and preparing the clean rolls. He was still flushed, a pale pink dusting across the expanse of his face and bleeding down towards his chest. The collar of his shirt stopped Victor from seeing how far down his chest it reached. He was also still panting a little, his breathing labored, but seemed otherwise unbothered. He saw Victor staring and gave him another pat on the knee, the fear notably absent from his features. Victor wondered if it had even been there in the first place.

He had always thought humans to be extraordinarily dull creatures, but he never felt more perplexed than he did in this moment as he watched Yuuri delicately unwrap his bandages until his shredded and bruised skin was visible. Then, with the utmost tenderness, Yuuri applied a salve to the healing wounds before winding the clean gauze over it.

“I’m sorry you lost your bottle,” Yuuri said after a moment of silence.

Victor had almost forgotten it, his previous rage feeling distant in his minds. Was it only seconds ago that he had this fragile man’s wrists between his on hand, ready to snap them? Now, he watched as those same wrists moved to gently work at healing Victor’s own broken bones. He tried once more to appreciate the irony of the situation, but was too caught up in the way Yuuri’s touch ghosted over Victor’s skin.

“It’s fine,” Victor found himself saying. It wasn’t fine. Victor had no way of going home without that bottle.

“I can go and look for it after my shift is over,” Yuuri offered, wrapping the final section of the gauze off at the top.

“Your shift?”

“I work at the local ice rink. It’s called Ice Castle. I teach ice skating lessons,” Yuuri explained.

Victor cocked his head, intrigued. He had never been ice skating before. There weren’t any patches of ice in the Shadow realm. The concept of weather in general was abstract. It was his human form that provided him with the context for what Yuuri was talking about. The images that flashed before his mind of bladed shoes and frozen lakes sent a shiver down his spine. His fingers twitched in anticipation.

It was only then that he remembered the sorry state of his legs. He wouldn’t even be able to walk with these, let alone skate.

“Yes, I would like that,” Victor said. Yuuri visibly brightened, clearly pleased.

“I’m sure it will turn up,” he assured with another pat on the knee. Yuuri’s cheery expression fell momentarily. “Oh, do you have to use the bathroom? You’ve been here for a couple days and you haven’t...” Yuuri’s cheeks flamed.

Victor considered his question. He was trapped in this mortal shell without his shadow, so it would make sense for it to function just as Yuuri’s did, but Victor knew that it didn’t. It wasn’t his true skin.

“No,” he said, “I’m not like you.”

Yuuri looked relieved.

“Of course not,” he agreed with a final infuriating pat on the knee pat before he took his leave.

Victor sighed and settled back into bed, resigned to wait for his human’s return.

 

* * *

 

 

While Yuuri was gone, Victor got a chance to take in his surroundings. He felt foolish for not doing so earlier, but granted himself a pardon due to his injury. It was a weak excuse, but Yakov wasn’t here to criticize him, so he lets it pass with a certain vindictive pleasure. Yakov wasn’t here to pass any form of judgement, so Victor was free to do as he pleased.

The room he was in was clearly lived in, as evident by the knick knacks and souvenirs that lined up against the shelves and the windowsill. Victor spotted two small paper flags pinned to either side of the large mirror adorning the adjacent wall. One bore Japan’s flag, and his mind supplemented the other to be the Thai flag. He wondered why Yuuri had it.

Next to the mirror, rows of pictures were taped up to the wall. In the daylight, Victor realized that most of them were of Yuuri. Mari was in a couple, as well as two older humans that had a strong resemblance to the two, probably their parents. In some of the photos, Yuuri was on the ice, face concentrated and posed in dynamic positions. In others, he was dawning a large circular medal around his neck, the colors of the medals varying from bronze to gold.

In many of the photos, Yuuri was smiling widely, cheeks flushed like when Victor saw him last, and eyes wide and endearing. Victor found a smile of his own being drawn out from his lips. As soon as he realized it, he schooled his face back into stony disinterest, but then let it relax a moment later when he remembered there was no one there to see it.

Shadow warriors were trained to be neither seen nor heard, but if seen they should be like a ghost. Now, though, Victor wasn’t a warrior nor did he have his shadow. While the thought irked him, he let the emotion roll of and instead smiled, big and pleased to match Yuuri’s. What Yakov didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him.

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuri returned in the evening.

He burst into the room bearing a large plastic bag. He was notably sweatier than before he came in. The bag smelled of salt and meat. Victor eyed it wearily. Human food always smells so strongly of salt.

“Did you find it?” He asked.

Yuuri’s response was notably delayed.

“No,” he said, not looking at Victor. It made suspicion churn in his gut. He was a warrior trained to perform torture on prisoners of war. He was not unskilled in extracting the truth.

He contemplated going forward with any real act of violence against the human in front of him, but ultimately decided against it. It was already clear that violence would have no real effect on Yuuri other than to invoke concern over Victor’s own physical state. He sighed again at the uselessness of it.

“Are you lying?” he asked bluntly instead.

Yuuri ignored Victor’s question and rummaged through the bag, pulling out an item.

“I brought you a red bean bun,” he said eyes shining and bright. The look was so intense that Victor found himself cowed into accepting it. He stared at the bun in his hand dumbly. Yakov would be ashamed of him.

“I don’t eat human food,” he said.

“Why not?” Yuuri asked cheerfully, pulling one out for himself and taking a bite. Victor shrugged.

“I don’t need to,” he explained simply.

“Just because you don’t need to, doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it,” Yuuri coaxed. He was so clearly trying to distract Victor from talking about the necklace that it was laughable. He should be irritated, enraged even, that a human would dare lie to him and distract him with fanciful treats, but instead he found himself terribly endeared. Humans had such strange customs.

“It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t be able to taste it much,” Victor dismissed handing the bun back to him. Yuuri took it, but he looked slightly dejected as he chewed through his own bun.

“Why not?”

“My human form still retains the most essential parts of my true being. In the Shadow Realm, I am sustained by my shadow alone. Here...” Victor trailed off. “Here, they are present, but I can choose to set compartmentalize them, like a drawer.”

“So you do need food,” Yuuri accused.

“I don’t _need_ it exactly, but if I were to open that draw inside my head then...”

Yuuri’s chewing quieted.

“Then what?” he asked.

“Well, I guess all the human emotions and desires of this body would rise to the surface,” Victor guessed. He had never been in a human form long enough to even debate doing it. Those from the Shadow Realm weren’t built for humanity. He didn’t know what would happen.

“Do you want to try it?” Yuuri asked, curious. “The buns are really good after all,” he said hastily afterwards, as if embarrassed by his bluntness.  

Victor surprised both of them by letting out a short laugh. What did he really have to lose? Yakov wasn’t going to open a portal for him any time soon.

“I don’t know will happen,” Victor warned, but they both hear the underlying agreement in his words.

Yuuri pulled out another bun.

“I’m sure it will be great. You’re not really living until you’ve tried one of these red bean buns,” he encouraged.

Victor accepted the bun. Why not, he thought before letting open the compartment within his human form that he keeps locked away. Victor felt it the exact moment the shift happened. His muscles tightened and then abruptly loosened and for a second all he could hear was white noise. He blinked, confused. Was that it?

Then a blinding pain hit him and Victor was on fire. He let out a choked cry before keeling forward, his body spasming and convulsing as he fell.

“Victor!” Yuuri cried, reaching out for him. As soon as his fingers touched Victor, the pain increased tenfold. Victor let out a silent scream and jerked away, hitting the ground and curling up into a ball.

Everything was on fire. Victor’s very skin felt like it was peeling off to reveal his quivering muscles beneath. His legs were the main source of his pain, twitching uncontrollably. It felt as if they are being stabbed ruthlessly with a thousand needles, puncturing his flesh and tearing his muscles and splintering the bone.

He could barely breathe. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest, almost as hysterical as he was, as if previously unaware of its presence inside his chest. It slammed against his ribcage, furious with Victor’s neglect.

All the while, a flurry of emotions tore through Victor’s head. Like a great storm, torrent down pour of sadness rained down on him, only to be overpowered by a great tsunami of anguish and loneliness which gave way to raging fires of anger and hatred. Victor gasped, trying to escape it, not realizing that the downpour began to manifest physically, two identical streams of salty tears pouring down his cheeks as he convulsed.

At some point, Victor thought he lost consciousness, though he wasn’t sure. After the first wave of pain, his vision went blurry and he couldn’t hear anything beyond his own panicked breathing, too locked in his own flurry of emotions. The pain seemed endless. It washed over Victor again and again until he didn’t have the energy to tremble.

Victor wondered if this was death, if he accidentally opened the wrong compartment within himself and now he was at death’s door. It sure felt like death was taking all he wanted from Victor. What else did Victor have left to give? What could be more tortuous than this?

 

* * *

 

 

The tides of Victor’s pain receded back into darkness what felt like hours later. Opening one rusty eye, he noted that he was no longer in Yuuri’s room. He was also no longer dressed. Victor blinked away his blurry vision and then groaned at the phantom shock of pain it brought.

“Victor?” A voice like a cloud whispered.

Victor focused. He was outside. He was in a pool, and Yuuri was sitting next to him, also notably nude, his wide eyes boring into him, anxious and plainly displaying distress.

“Yes,” he rasped out. His throat felt like it had been through a blender. He wondered if he had been screaming.

Yuuri wordlessly pushed a bottle of water towards him at the end of the pool. Victor reached for it, lifting a hand out of the water to grab it. The air stung his skin, cold. The water down his throat soothed its soreness like honey. Victor was quick to sink back into the warmth of the pool.

How warm it was. Victor’s usually impervious skin could now acutely feel the difference between the warm bath and the fresh, cold air. It was disorienting, but the warmth of bath water left a heated feeling in Victor’s limbs, as if his shivering muscles were being caressed. He felt a surge of gratefulness that Yuuri thought to bring him here. The feeling was strange. Before, his emotions were distinct and easy to sort through, recognizable. Now, it feels like the water, spreading across his limbs, but its hearth in his mind. The feeling pulsed like it was alive and bled into other emotions.

He turned to face the human that brought about these feelings. He expected to feel a surge of anger and hatred towards him for convincing him to do this, but instead his mind went peacefully quiet.

Yuuri looked as if he had gone through a hell of his own. His hair was a mess, strands lying in every direction and clumped up in parts like he had been continuously running his hands through it. His whole face was flushed, and his nose looks especially ruddy. Those big eyes of his were glassy, but otherwise dry, but large tear tracks stood out against his cheeks making it clear that that hadn’t always been the case.

Victor touched his own cheeks. Had he not just been crying too? It was strange thing to think that a shadow warrior had just bawled like a child in front of this human. Yuuri’s eyes tracked his movements.

“Are you okay?” he asked meekly.

“I think so,” Victor responded slowly. The pain has subsided for now, and mostly Victor just feels exhausted and washed out as if he been beaten with a meat grinder.

Yuuri’s lower lip trembled and Victor waited to see if he would start to cry, but his eyes, albeit a bit watery, stay determinedly dry.

“I’m very sorry, Victor,” Yuuri whispered, voice trembling and barely audible. He certainly looked sorry. Victor didn’t have the energy to say much, so he settled on patting Yuuri on the shoulder lightly. Yuuri accepted the gesture for what it was, and Victor was pleased to see that his flush did indeed carry farther down his chest.

“Where is my bean bun?” he asked lightly, trying at humor. It was odd now, that such a statement should stand out so clearly in Victor’s mind as one for comic relief. Words held such a different weight now. They felt like a tool of their own. In the Shadow Realm, communication had its own nuances, but now in the human world, the layers were stacked upon each other like flaky baklava. “Where is it, _Yuuri?_ ” Victor asked again, just for the sake of saying the other man’s name. It tasted new on his lips.

Yuuri looked crestfallen.

“I ate it,” he confessed, looking terribly grief-stricken.

Victor blinked.

“You ate my bun?”

Yuuri nodded miserably.

“It was getting cold, and I’ve always been a stress eater,” Yuuri said somewhat defensively.

Victor barked out laughter at that and continued to laugh, peals of laughter ringing from deep inside of him. Yuuri joined in, hesitant at first, but then relieved. When Victor settled again, he felt almost as weightless as his shadow form.

“I’ll buy you as many as you want tomorrow,” Yuuri promised between hiccuped giggles.

Victor nodded, appeased.

“That will do.”

  


 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor gets cozy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as it turns out, I have had this draft lying around in my folder on my computer for a couple months... In fact the final chapter is halfway finished... I don't know what to say. I guess I forgot about it for a little while. Sorry.

It was reaching the birth of Spring when Victor was cast out of his realm. Now, Hasetsu was in full bloom, the cherry blossoms boasting full and pink shivering pretty kisses in the breeze. The skies were paintings of baby blue and smudges of white clouds. Like a newborn, Victor took in every sight like it was the first time. It is his first time, he thought. Seeing the world through these human eyes, through  _ real _ human eyes had irrevocably changed the way the Earth seemed to spin.

It was a strange occurrence. While the spark of it thrilled Victor, it also left him feeling oddly vulnerable, like an exposed nerve or a live wire. Yuuri’s touch no longer felt like a pressure as much as an invitation for Victor to lean forward and rest his weary head upon his shoulder. He found himself nearly falling forward on multiple occasions. 

Mari, too, suddenly seemed to be a more important player in the events of Victor’s daily life. His legs were still scraps of what they used to be, and with his newfound awareness, Victor found the quiet of Yuuri’s room to be equally as painful as the throbbing in his legs. 

Mari, for whatever reason, took pity on Victor and began to spend time with while he rested. Sometimes she brought in kitchen scraps, and other times she brought a red leather-bound binder full of family photos dating back over thirty years. She would only let him look at a page or so per visit, and would slap at his hand if he tried to peek forward. 

Each page had a story of its own belonging to an grandfather or a cousin. She told their stories between puffs of her cigarette, eyes clouded and distant as if she were revisiting the memories of her ancestors that had occurred years before her time.

Victor listened to her stories quietly. Family was a lucid concept in the Shadow Realm. Lifetimes were such finicky things in a place where time fluctuated between worlds. Some stretched for thousands of years while others seemed to fade away in the blink of an eye. It all depended on the shadow of the person.

A person’s shadow was their source of life, their very being. Without it, one could not live in the Shadow Realm. Like the world itself, shadows allowed for them to bleed between the fabrics of world, existing in their own on the basis that they should be able to flirt with those surrounding. Its very existence depended on the borders. 

Victor knew, like any Shadow Warrior did, that those born to the Shadow Realm were not from there originally. No one came to live there by origin. Every being, every fluff of cloud, and speck of dirt reflected some aspect of a neighboring world. Victor suspected that his very shape was the consequence of another man on another world fading away only for his shadow to be born again in the Shadow Realm. 

The Shadow Realm’s mythology attempted to explain it, but most of it became more convoluted the more it tried to be picked apart.

It was why war thrived in his world. Chaos and confusion borne war like no other catalyst. Victor thrived on it as his fellow Shadow Warriors did. It gave them purpose and direction. It gave them power over their own fates, over their own beings, their own shadows.

Now, as Victor traced the border of a black and white photo of a great uncle in traditional dress holding a small child in his arms, he felt the absence of his shadow. It swallowed him like a great hole. He asked Mari to leave him alone for a bit. She looked pityingly down at him before silently exiting the room, closing the door softly.

 

* * *

 

 

It only took two more weeks for Victor’s legs to heal completely. Jagged scars remained twined around Victor’s calves serving as a reminder of his punishment. Between work, Yuuri still kept him company, helping him adjust to his new body, with its lack of protection against the more human elements of life. 

The most overwhelming part was the influx of emotions bleeding into each other. Victor had endured torture and physical pain in his training, but felt helpless against the churning of his own mind as his thoughts somersaulted and tore against each other, ripping new and nameless feelings in their wake.

Yuuri helped him write down in a blank journal all the things he was feeling. Victor was hesitant at first, but the image of the red photo album flashed through his mind and he was swarmed with an intense longing. 

Victor wanted evidence that he had been here. He wanted years to pass and the trees to die and bloom over and over as his writing outlived the threat of death. So, with little persuasion, Victor accepted Yuuri’s offered pen.

He wrote his thoughts and feelings out in a bulleted list and then categorized them on the next page by those that were the most similar. Some were easy like  _ sadness _ . Others were less describable, so Victor wrote them out in longer sentences.  _ I feel like I have been placed on a cloud and it is drifting towards the horizon. I feel like there is a bird in my stomach. I feel like an ant in a meadow.  _

Victor liked it best when Yuuri wrote them down for him as he tried to word his thoughts clearly. His penmanship was smooth and loopy, and soothed Victor to watch. Yuuri explained that making lists used to help settle his nerves before a competition back when he still skated competitively. 

Once, he even let Victor take a peek in one of his journals. The handwriting in it was much more sporadic, large in places and then very small and scratchy in others like he was writing it as fast as he could as the thoughts spilled from his brain to the page. They were similar to Victor’s, but also distinctly Yuuri. 

_ I feel as though I am the last duckling in a row and a great wind has blown me from my mother and none of my siblings have paused to wait for me. I feel like a grape flavored soda among Coca-Cola cans.  _

Victor’s favorite read,  _ I feel like katsudon. _ He hadn’t been sure whether it was positive or not until Yuuri had given him a bowl to try and he realized it was very much a positive thing. It was the last thing Yuuri had written in his journal. It was right before his last competition. Yuuri had won gold at his third Grand Prix Final. It was the highlight of his career. Before, Yuuri had teetered between bronze and silver, but that year something had clicked and he finally took the gold. 

Victor loved hearing about Yuuri’s ice skating stories. He had an abundance of them, and while many of them left Yuuri grimacing or flushed in embarrassment, Victor found that Yuuri’s soft voice soothed something aching in his chest. He couldn’t identify it, but he felt no desire to try and pick the words to describe it. This feeling was supposed to stay anonymous and lived afloat in Victor’s mind. 

It was strange. This world was far more corporeal than the Shadow Realm, but the longer Victor stayed, the less he thought of going back. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

Yuuri pulled Victor into the living room during dinner when he could finally walk with little trouble and announced him to the Katsukis. He did it with such an urgency that Victor found himself oddly endeared, but unnerved. It felt important, but he couldn’t identify which part he was supposed to be focused on. 

There was the slight drop of the mouth of Yuuri’s father and the rounded cheeks scrunching into a pleased smile by his mother and of course Mari hovering at the edge of the scene, unlit cigarette between her smirking lips. 

“I was wondering when we would get to meet Yuuri’s secret foreign guest,” Yuuri’s father, Toshiya said, contemplative before taking a bite of his food. They all sat around the table, their bowls filled with steaming fresh food. His voice was light and carried easily to Victor’s ears. It held no judgement but a weight of its own that stuck.

Victor didn’t know how to respond. 

“You have healed quite nicely,” Yuuri’s mother, Hiroko commented. 

Victor stood, silent. Both of their facial expressions were smooth and soft, the same way Yuuri’s got when he read to Victor at his bedside. Only now it confused Victor. Yuuri, however, let out a small sigh of relief. Victor turned to him and blinked. 

“Yes,” Victor said, clearing his throat, “thank you for taking care of me.” 

Hiroko’s smile widened and she fixed Yuuri with a strong look to which he blushed at. 

“Let’s eat,” she said, eyes bright. 

Yuuri turned to him, a small, genuine smile of his own adorning his face framed by flushed cheeks and shining eyes. Victor wasn’t quite sure what had just occurred, but he had never claimed to understand humans in the first place so he followed Yuuri to the table without complaint. 

 

* * *

 

 

“I want to see it,” Victor said. His finger pointed to the photo of Yuuri in the red leather-bound album. It was a photo of him as a child, cheeks flushed red from the ice rink posed delicately with both hands over his head and his leg pointed out in the air, the flash of the camera glinting off his skates. His eyes are bright and happy. Victor tapped the photo with his finger. 

Mari chuckled. They had finally caught up to the present day. Victor had been taken through the youth of Hiroko and Toshiya and the transition of Mari’s life from puberty to present. They were finally in Yuuri’s section of the album. It was Victor’s favorite. 

It had taken them nearly a month to get through it. Over time, Victor began to wander out of Yuuri’s room more. While Yuuri worked helped Hiroko in the kitchen and assisted Toshiya in attending to guests or restocking towels or taking out the trash. Every chore, every action seemed to hold so much weight when it was measured in human time. 

When Yuuri wasn’t working, they took walks by the beach or into town, introducing Victor to different types of foods or places. As strange as it was, the richness of this life began to soak into Victor until it felt almost mundane and routine. It was hard for him to imagine not waking up to the sunlight streaming through the blinds in Yuuri’s room. 

After Victor healed properly, they set up another mat in his room so that Yuuri could have his bed back. Falling asleep to the sound of another’s breathing soothed Victor in a way that his tongue could not form into coherent sentences. It was another way of measuring time, to measure the significance of life against the breaths of a human body.

Yet, of all the places they had gone, Yuuri hadn’t taken him to the ice rink. He disappeared there every day to teach lessons and to coach amature skaters, yet he never extended the offer to Victor to tag along. Some days, Yuuri would escape in the off hours to skate leisurely and even then he would just offer Victor a sweet smile before disappearing out the door. It stung in a way that Victor didn’t imagine it would.

All he could think of was of how many of Yuuri’s breaths he was missing when he wasn’t there to witness him taking them. 

“We have videos,” Mari offered. She flipped to the next page in the album revealing Yuuri in his early teenage years holding up a blue ribbon wearing a sparkly green and blue striped leotard. A woman stood beside him with a hand on his shoulder and an intense smile on her face. 

Victor hummed in response.

“I want it to be real.” 

Mari fixed him with a look and shrugged. 

“Ask him.”

Victor blinked. He took his finger from the page and let the book come to a close for now. He turned and gave Mari a blinding smile. 

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuri was not surprised that Victor wanted to see him skate, but he did seem a little caught off guard by the intensity with which Victor asked him about it. 

They were in Yuuri’s room and Yuuri was perched at the edge of his bed, one leg propped up in lap so he could massage the soreness from it. His eyes were downcast and intent, fingers moving in small circular motions. 

“Take me to the ice rink?” Victor said. He had intended for it to come out as a command, assertive and direct like Yakov trained him to speak when addressing his subordinates. 

Yuuri was not his subordinate.

Yuuri glanced up to take in Victor standing defiant and tall in the doorway adorned in too-short pants revealing the white lines of his scars. Yuuri gave a small half smile. 

“Oh,” he said. “Okay, well I just got back from the ice rink.”

Victor frowned. That was true. Yuuri had a tired slouch to his shoulders and his cheeks still held the memory of a flush from the chill of the rink. Guilt toyed with his intestines for not noticing in the first place. He had been to caught up in his own presentation. 

“No, okay. Okay, no,” Victor stumbled to say. Furious, he felt his own face flush. “Let’s not go. I don’t care. I don’t want to go,” he spat, unable to help the petty edge of his words. 

Yuuri stared at Victor before his face slowly melted away into a soft smile, dopey and annoying. He put his leg down and wiggled his toes out. Victor watched his movements carefully. 

“We’ll go tomorrow,” Yuuri promised, eyes sincere. 

Victor stared back, his flush spreading down to his chest. 

“Ok. Yes. Good.” 

Victor quickly escaped to the other room. He needed to write this down in his journal. 

 

* * *

 

 

Yuuri was beautiful on the ice. Victor wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this. The moment Yuuri glided onto the ice, it was as if he shed his human skin. His movements were smooth and confident, controlled but somehow louder than his normal demeanor. 

In the Shadow Realm theaters put on puppet shows where dancers detached their shadows from their core centers to cast them against large canvas screens. The shows were spectacles of grace and movement, their forms blending into each other to make a greater picture or to lead the viewer through a narrative. No doubt if Yuuri were born to the Shadow Realm he would have been such a dancer. Victor’s hands twitched, fingers clenching and unclenching as if they could pull Yuuri’s shadow and wear it against his skin like a blanket. Victor imagined it would be a willowy thing, soft and pliable but quiet, all good qualities for a shadow to have. His chest ached with the desire.

Yuuri completed a spin and turned to look at Victor. His eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed. Victor ached so furiously without the protection of his shadow against this cruel onslaught of feelings. Yuuri seemed to pulse with the very essence of his humanity, now. There were no shadows in this area, all glittering icy and shiny metal skates. He ached and ached until Yuuri skated up to his side and offered him his hand.

Victor took his hand, gently and allowed Yuuri to pull him onto the ice with him. Yuuri’s touch was cool and worked its way straight to Victor’s core before it sighed and melted, spreading warmth through his chest and done his spine. The aching ceased and he smiled in response, almost instinctually. 

“You’re a natural,” Yuuri commented after they successfully completed their fifth lap around the ice. Victor began to feel the rhythm of the ice as it slipped beneath his feet after the second lap, but he couldn’t quite get himself to release Yuuri’s fingers from his grip. 

He merely shrugged. When Yuuri began to slide out of his grip, Victor immediately tightened his grip. Yuuri’s eyes lit up in surprise, but he yielded, giving Victor a tentative, but confused smile. Victor sucked in a quick breath before dropping the hand and glaring sheepishly at the glittering ice. 

He skated faster so Yuuri wouldn’t see the light flush of his cheeks. Victor felt Yuuri’s eyes tracking his movements as he really began to pick up speed, moving across the expanse of white as if he had been doing it his whole life. 

Yuuri caught him as he was coming back around the curve, gently snatching his arm and leading him towards the center of the rink.

“You’re really quite good,” Yuuri murmurs, cheeks flushed bright red and eyes dancing with mirth. 

Victor wanted to tell Yuuri that he was wrong, that Yuuri was the true talent. He had been through all of the videos Mari had given him the night before. The more watched, the more he felt he understood the man before him. 

Language was a finicky thing in the Shadow Realm. The beings that occupied it came from strange and faraway places and the means of communication often clashed-another of the reasons war flourished so immensely. 

If Yuuri were to go to the Shadow Realm, he wouldn’t need speech at all. Those around him would understand him simply from the way he would dip his head or lift his leg or leap deftly in the air, a conversation carried through bodies and wind. 

Victor said none of these things. He imagined that wherever he had been before the Shadow Realm, there was no speech at all, only deep guttural noises and hisses for no words would climb from his tongue to spill over and out of his mouth now. 

Instead, he looked away and muttered a short, “thank you” into his sleeve and skated away quickly, moving to complete another lap, his heart pounding heavily in his chest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun preview for next time:
> 
> You can’t stay here.”  
> Victor didn’t open his eyes.   
> “There are no rules against it.”  
> “You don’t belong here,” Yuri spat. “You’re a Shadow Warrior. You’re Yakov’s best Shadow Warrior. What good will your skillset do you in the human realm?”   
> “Maybe it’s time I develop a new skill set,” Victor mused, eyes still closed.   
> Fingers curled into Victor’s arm and pulled sharply.   
> “You can’t just abandon Yakov, he’s your Master,” Yuri seethed, eyes furious. A Shadow Warrior did not abandon their master. It was unheard of, it was the unwritten law. Separation was only granted in death. 
> 
> ....
> 
>  
> 
> Ooohh... Yuri shows up. Nice. 
> 
> Anyways, let me know what you thought of this chapter and the story in general. I'm curious to what you all think will happen next. Thoughts on the ending of this little fic?

**Author's Note:**

> Any mistakes are my own, so if you see any errors, feel free to let me know in the comments. Also, in general let me know what you thought in the comments. I already have the end of this drafted and I am halfway through writing part two. Yuri, of course, is bound to make an appearance. Let me know in the comments what you think will happen next.


End file.
